KRS release dates

[Daniel]

AWS and TPWS work although no DRA.

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[darkavenger38]

don't forget engine start and stop:d

regards
Tom

 

[devon_metro]

AWS and TPWS work although no DRA.

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ROFL!!

 

[kestrel]

Well after all the hype and long wait, i popped into GAME and purchased my copy, ................and its about the same as MSTS except the sound is totally naff and the route inaccurate!

Its a touch slow on my laptop (a fairly high spec one with a 128mb GC)

First impressions not good i'm afraid, they've had all this time to get it right and its not, can't even use the ECML as it won't let me select a locomotive!

 

[5872]

Well after all the hype and long wait, i popped into GAME and purchased my copy, ................and its about the same as MSTS except the sound is totally naff and the route inaccurate!

Its a touch slow on my laptop (a fairly high spec one with a 128mb GC)

First impressions not good i'm afraid, they've had all this time to get it right and its not, can't even use the ECML as it won't let me select a locomotive!

lol . I havent got mine for two reasons ; havent got it yet , and waiting for bugs or errors. Although the detail makes up for it considerly.... .

 

[D306]

I haven't got mine today, as i ordered it a couple of days ago. Might get it tomorrow or monday

 

[kestrel]

i didn't order mine jus popped in and got it off the shelf

i hope the patches are forthcoming!

 

[Metroland]

Well after all the hype and long wait, i popped into GAME and purchased my copy, ................and its about the same as MSTS except the sound is totally naff and the route inaccurate!

Its a touch slow on my laptop (a fairly high spec one with a 128mb GC)

First impressions not good i'm afraid, they've had all this time to get it right and its not, can't even use the ECML as it won't let me select a locomotive!

Are you sure you got the right thing? It's miles better than MSTS and the routes are very good renditions in my opinion...

 

[Mintona]

Are you sure you got the right thing? It's miles better than MSTS and the routes are very good renditions in my opinion...

Bearing in mind Kestrel drives the GWML everyday

 

[kestrel]

considering its a present day rendition it hasn't even got airport junction on it!! yet the wires are up!, alot of the signals are in the wrong places, buildings are wrong, footbridges are wrong etc etc etc

They've got no excuse! they've had all this time to do it and instead do a right bodge job of it, wish i never bought it now!


And yep i drive the route and the bits i don't i've travelled a zillion times

 

[Metroland]

Bearing in mind Kestrel drives the GWML everyday

Baring in mind I spent much of my working life on it too...

Yes, Airport junction is missing and there are bits missing at Paddington, but overall it's not bad scenery wise IMHO. There are actually quite a few signalling cock-ups on the route, and the lack of approach control, especially at Didcot east, is a downside. Overall, not perfect, but a good impression.

 

[Mintona]

Baring in mind I spent much of my working life on it too...

Yes, Airport junction is missing and there are bits missing at Paddington, but overall it's not bad scenery wise IMHO. There are actually quite a few signalling cock-ups on the route, and the lack of approach control, especially at Didcot east, is a downside. Overall, not perfect, but a good impression.

I didn't know, I wasn't having a go! Just saying that I know Kestrel drives it everyday

 

[Dave A]

I must admit that nothing makes me want to buy this sim at the moment. It looks too rushed, buggy and no better than MSTS.

And before anyone says its only V1 and patches will fix it up, I think you are taking it very lightly when you have just spent money on something that's not complete... :?

 

[Daniel]

David, in my opinion its best to purchase a copy now even if it does have bugs if you intend to buy it at all. This is so that we can show EA that there is money to be made in Rail Simulation. If enough people not sayingdecided to wait to patch 1, there might not be a patch 1, as funding may be withdrawn. Besides, most bugs listed on the Rail Simulator forums were taken from UKTrainSim - if those who hadn't posted hadn't bought the game the bug might not have been seen or reported, and wouldn't have been fixed.

As to the question why the game was released with bugs, or rushed, I doubt that Rail Simulator got anywhere near as much funding for other games such as Halo 3, an that EA were forcing Kuju into releasing it to get some cash.

However, I'm not pushing anyone into buying it. If you don't want to, don't.

 

[GeoffM]

There are actually quite a few signalling cock-ups on the route, and the lack of approach control, especially at Didcot east, is a downside.

Oh great. My name is in the credits and they ignore my advice. I spent a whole day explaining approach control to them, and splitting distants. Even gave them some links to signalling websites. I repeatedly offered to beta test the signalling to ensure that they've got it right *before* they release it, all to no avail it would seem. A load of good that'll do to my reputation then.

Geoff M.

 

[Metroland]

Oh great. My name is in the credits and they ignore my advice. I spent a whole day explaining approach control to them, and splitting distants. Even gave them some links to signalling websites. I repeatedly offered to beta test the signalling to ensure that they've got it right *before* they release it, all to no avail it would seem. A load of good that'll do to my reputation then.

Geoff M.

oh you as well? Me too, I explained approach control and the difference between auto and worked signals at least 3 times to one of the subject matter experts and gave them links the NR rule books. He assures me it can be scripted though! In the default routes, the signalling is as usual very disappointing and well as some of the opps side, probably more so than MSTS currently. Other than that, with the exception of the bugs it's great. I have no doubt it will greatly be improved in time.

 

[kestrel]

Baring in mind I spent much of my working life on it too...

Yes, Airport junction is missing and there are bits missing at Paddington, but overall it's not bad scenery wise IMHO. There are actually quite a few signalling cock-ups on the route, and the lack of approach control, especially at Didcot east, is a downside. Overall, not perfect, but a good impression.

There's quite a bit missing! No excuse for not including airport junction!, there's alot thats not instantly recognizable when it should considering the time taken to do it, its almost as if it was rushed out, the gradients are right so is the basic track layout (with quite a few ommisions tho!) but it loses out on the details!

 

[Dave A]

David, in my opinion its best to purchase a copy now even if it does have bugs if you intend to buy it at all. This is so that we can show EA that there is money to be made in Rail Simulation. If enough people not sayingdecided to wait to patch 1, there might not be a patch 1, as funding may be withdrawn. Besides, most bugs listed on the Rail Simulator forums were taken from UKTrainSim - if those who hadn't posted hadn't bought the game the bug might not have been seen or reported, and wouldn't have been fixed.

As to the question why the game was released with bugs, or rushed, I doubt that Rail Simulator got anywhere near as much funding for other games such as Halo 3, an that EA were forcing Kuju into releasing it to get some cash.

However, I'm not pushing anyone into buying it. If you don't want to, don't.

The thing is, with games such as Halo 3 and Gears of War, they can afford to release something that is unfinished and needs improving, as millions of people will still buy it for the sake of having it. Rail Simulator is the same, but to a certain degree. It will have people who buy it for the sake of it, but the number wont be anywhere near the millions mark!

So it relies on first impressions that reach people, like myself, who are looking for a rail simulator, but something that doesn't take much effort and is near enough ready out the box. This is because it is only an interest, compared to a hobby for some, and the money could be spent on something else.

When Kuju have been using sources, such as UKTS, First, and the above people, to get plenty of information on making this simulator the best ever, it should be just that. Instead, they have released something which is clearly unfinished, and people have gone out and bought it, so Kuju/EA can see if its been worth working on for the last few years...

Its not good business and its definitely not fair!

 

[Metroland]

There's quite a bit missing! No excuse for not including airport junction!, there's alot thats not instantly recognizable when it should considering the time taken to do it, its almost as if it was rushed out, the gradients are right so is the basic track layout (with quite a few ommisions tho!) but it loses out on the details!

Airport junction is a big thing to miss, there might be reasons of that and until I play with the world editor, I can't confirm. I think the main thing, having spoken to a lot of people, is they like the graphics, physics, but operationally it's poor in fact worse than MSTS - to such as extent it makes it hard to drive. However, having looked at some of the scripts, I would say at this early stage a lot of things can be sorted out.

Realistically though, you will never get a route with everything modelled, it's just not commercially viable at this price point and I doubt anyone has enough free time to produce such as thing. To me, it has enough flavour, there's a few things wrong with tower blocks in Oxford and York (historic cities!) but it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of it - it is after all a game, not a multi-million sim with it's own cab.

That's not to say that there aren't annoying things like typos in the scenarios (at least 2 so far), passengers sitting in sidings, rain inside stations and some of the activities are cryptic. Stuff like bushes on the Oxford and ECML route do need removing, I'm not sure whether that was by design or in error, either way, it's simply not allowed on a real railway. And the signals could do with being a bit more visible while I'm thinking about it.

But I have no doubt this sort of thing will get patched as a number of people are reporting the same things, overall it shows a lot of promise, and by the time freeware and payware starts coming this will all be forgotten. For those that remember MSTS and Trainz had exactly the same troubles, as has a lot of software.

 

[devon_metro]

Are you able to edit Airport Junction into the route?

I also find the lack of 66, 180 and HEX/Connect units a bit poor.

 

[Daniel]

If you edit the default routes, the activites supplied apparently don't work.

 

[Tom C]

Ive got to say that Rail Simulator is a big disappointment.

The scenery for example is not bad but the attention to detail is pretty poor and the driving experience is still a long way from the standards of BVE. The sound quality of the Great Western units are very average and once again a mile away from what we currently have in BVE.

The only thing plus point is the editor which looks quite good.

 

[Meld]

Oh great. My name is in the credits and they ignore my advice. I spent a whole day explaining approach control to them, and splitting distants. Even gave them some links to signalling websites. I repeatedly offered to beta test the signalling to ensure that they've got it right *before* they release it, all to no avail it would seem. A load of good that'll do to my reputation then.

Geoff M.

Geoff your not the only on John Y is in the same boat - funny that some of the best contributors to MSTS are all listed in the credits and must now be cringing at what they see for all thier advice.
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The thing is, with games such as Halo 3 and Gears of War, they can afford to release something that is unfinished and needs improving, as millions of people will still buy it for the sake of having it. Rail Simulator is the same, but to a certain degree. It will have people who buy it for the sake of it, but the number wont be anywhere near the millions mark!

So it relies on first impressions that reach people, like myself, who are looking for a rail simulator, but something that doesn't take much effort and is near enough ready out the box. This is because it is only an interest, compared to a hobby for some, and the money could be spent on something else.

When Kuju have been using sources, such as UKTS, First, and the above people, to get plenty of information on making this simulator the best ever, it should be just that. Instead, they have released something which is clearly unfinished, and people have gone out and bought it, so Kuju/EA can see if its been worth working on for the last few years...

Its not good business and its definitely not fair!

Agreed its totally unfair, why should we be made to pay for the privalige of beta testing this Sim which in my opinion is no better than a beta. feedback to RDS is going to be long and hard after this weekend It'll take them days to go through it all.

I'm disappointed and frustrated with this new sim. The manual or lack of, which according to the boards needed 2 weeks to produce is totally useless - a full manual is a minimum requirement for anything new.

As I posted on UKTS, who is responsible for it being rushed -

I believe this lies in the hands of EA - A slack period in production of games on the run up to Xmas with bigger titles to be made ready, for the Xmas market, and try and cash in quickly on Railsim so it doesn't affect other sales.

RDS as developers would surely have wanted a better product to go out as it makes them look incapable to say the least. Even in the few weeks before going 'gold' comments were made and ignored.

The financiers that have money in Railsim will have money tied up in the development of many games - so why push this through early. Unless they are taking a bigger slice of the pie the later the game is released.

 

[GeoffM]

Kuju had a number of subject matter experts - me on UK signalling (plus one or two others; more on German signalling, which they've also ballsed), plus other subjects. We spent a day or more at Kuju HQ where we explained the subject and had a Q&A session. We had a forum that only Kuju and ourselves had access to. During the two years the signalling forum had a grand total of about 30 posts (can't check; it's been deleted already) - most by the experts commenting on things rumoured or seen in videos or screenshots. Precious little was asked by Kuju, which already had a few of us commenting on this fact back when the release date was formalised.

Now, I can live with the wrong tower blocks in Oxford, or generic scenery used, or sparse scenery. I can live with typos or trees on the line - but beta testing would have found this, so as a product it wasn't tested properly. But when you rely on the signals to tell you how to drive, and those signals are flawed, then the ENTIRE GAME is flawed and unusable. That is unforgivable, given the fantastic opportunities Kuju had to get this right.

While this isn't a big budget game like Halo or whatever the latest kill-em-all is, MSTS was Kuju's best selling game ever (a fact reported by Kuju themselves). That's why they went it alone when MS pulled the plug on MSTS2 - they knew it was a safe bet. So lack of finances does not excuse the flaws, or the opportunities to fix those flaws. Which just leaves time. Was it rushed?

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh to Kuju. They have obviously done some things extremely well. But what good is a game without working signals? To put it into context, how about releasing Quake and then finding that the guns don't fire? That's how fundamental this is. Let's hope they fix it.

Geoff M.

 

[Meld]

Geoff thanks for an open reply, it only confirms in my mind that the 'Community Involvement' was a pure marketing tool to find out if it would be worth the development time. As just about every piece of advice has been taken and ignored - the months silence before release allegedly for manual production was a farce and now the development tools will be released on the 12th November. see here http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?f=215&t=75159

One question begs to be asked - if the tools are the same as the developers use as stated why not release them today ?????